Quality of Service

Approach

Quality of service is a key performance indicator in any business. At Canberra Airport, it is a key performance indicator across the entire business, from the traditional airfield and passenger terminal functions to the business parks and retail centre. In each part of the Airport business, quality of service is measured, benchmarked and targeted for continuous improvement.

Quality of service indicators are therefore an integral part of the day-to-day management of Canberra Airport. While this type of information is typically not made public by the vast majority of businesses, Canberra Airport recognises the need for transparency in the quality of service delivered by the traditional airfield and passenger terminal functions.

Canberra Airport has, therefore, committed to quarterly reporting on the quality of service delivered by its airfield and terminal facilities, using actual indicators sourced from the travelling public. This information is available below, for viewing by the travelling public, and for periodic review by all levels of government.

Measurement of Quality of Service

The measurement of quality of service is not without its challenges. In the past, Canberra Airport’s quality of service was assessed by an annual survey of two airlines, as its primary ‘customers’. Aside from reliability issues associated with the small sample size of the survey, and the inherent bias from commercially attuned airlines providing the survey response, this approach failed to gauge the service delivered to the ultimate customer, the passenger.

Canberra Airport has, therefore, adopted an alternative approach, one focussed on the quality of service delivered to passengers, as determined by the passengers. This involves collecting and collating all passenger feedback on airport facilities, from multiple sources, identifying and aggregating common themes and, finally, reporting on the basis of these common themes.

This approach has the following advantages over the traditional survey approach:

Rather than a periodic survey conducted over a matter of weeks, the process of collecting data for quality of service measurement is a continuous process that takes place throughout the year (and, therefore not selective in any part of the year).

The timeliness of quality of service data, based on the ability for passengers to provide feedback at any time during the year, means that there is less chance of erosion of detail and extent of information than might otherwise occur if the provision of feedback is delayed until the next survey period.

Passengers can provide feedback in an unconstrained manner, free from the restrictions of a predetermined set of survey questions. This allows the feedback to be both as specific and wide ranging as necessary, minimises the risk of omission (which may occur in a restrictive survey format), and yields a more meaningful dataset.

Sourcing the quality of service data directly from the passengers delivers a dataset directly from the ultimate customer, and is free from the commercial bias of one or more airlines.

Importantly, the interest of airlines in the standard of services delivered by the airport is not overlooked. The interests of airlines are protected by the long-term contractual agreements between airports and airlines, where airlines have recourse for faults or failures in the facilities and services provided by the airport.

Oversight

Canberra Airport is committed to sharing its results on quality of service performance with the traveling public, and relevant government agencies. The airport will publish these results by releasing the quarterly reports on the website.

In addition, where passenger feedback indicates an emergence of a significant quality of service issue at the Airport (as evidenced by a particular issue attracting negative feedback comprising 0.1% of passenger traffic in the period), the Commonwealth Department of Infrastructure will be notified of the issue within 60 days and be provided with detail of corrective action(s) being undertaken by the airport to remedy the issue. This information will also be made public as part of the release of the quarterly reports.